Avs draft pick Conner Bleackley is in town for the team’s development camp. (John Leyba, The Denver Post)

A lot of people ask “what is development camp all about?” and this story tries to answer that question.
It’s about “learning to be a pro” off the ice, essentially. The newest first-round pick of the Avalanche, center Conner Bleackley (I’m sure to misspell this name at some point) talked to a few reporters today about what it’s been like at Avs development camp so far.

A couple other things:
– Avs will hold a rookie camp this year. Word is it’ll start Sept. 8 at the practice facility. They haven’t had one the last few years, so this will be a nice thing for hardcore fans again.

– Nothing new to report on talks with Ryan O’Reilly. My personal belief is this thing is headed to arbitration, O’Reilly will choose a two-year deal and be traded away before that. Maybe I’ll be proven wrong.

With Ryan Wilson ready to come back, we wondered about who would have to go from the active roster. We just got our answer. Matt Hunwick has been placed on waivers. If a team doesn’t put in a claim on him in the next 24 hours, he will be sent to Lake Erie of the AHL.

Nobody claimed Matt Hunwick or Greg Zanon in the 24-hour waiver window. That means they remain the property and responsibility of the Avs. Their contracts remain in place, obviously.
So that means this: if the Avs are going to sign any free agents, they’re going to have to trade someone off the current roster. At least, by opening night they will.

I’m a bit surprised nobody claimed Hunwick. Not shocked, mind you, but he’s still got good wheels and there were times last year when he, ahem, actually played pretty well.

Aaron Palushaj was not give a qualifying offer by the Colorado Avalanche and becomes an unrestricted free agent. (Karl Gehring, The Denver Post)

Say goodbye to Aaron Palushaj. We hardly knew ye, Paloosh.

I thought he did a lot of good things with the Avs, but the team elected not to give the Michigan native a qualifying offer today. So he becomes an unrestricted free agent.

Matt Hunwick and Greg Zanon were placed on waivers earlier today. If nobody claims them, they remain property of the Avs. I would guess that Hunwick will get picked up by someone, but I’m not too sure about Zanon.

Paul Stastny goes on a breakaway in a game against the Edmonton Oilers this season.(Andy Cross / The Denver Post)

In 10 games as Team USA’s captain at the World Championship, Avalanche center Paul Stastny amassed a team-high 15 points (seven goals). The Americans went 7-3, including Sunday’s 3-2 overtime/shootout victory over Finland for the bronze medal. Stastny factored in on both regulation goals, scoring the second after setting up the first. It was Team USA’s first medal since 2004 and just third overall since 1963.

The Americans’ average age was 24.8. Avs defensemen Erik Johnson and Matt Hunwick and Colorado forward Aaron Palushaj were also on the team, plus former University of Denver defensemen Matt Carle of the Tampa Bay Lightning and Chris Butler of the Calgary Flames.

“We came together as a team and this group was able to achieve something only two other teams have done in the last 50 years for our country and that’s win a medal. It’s not easy,” said Team USA coach Joe Sacco, the former Avs bench boss. “I thought we had terrific leadership on this team, and our captain, Paul Stastny, was such a key factor both on and off the ice. You win as a team and ultimately that’s why we were successful.”

UPDATE: Avalanche left wing/captain Gabe Landeskog might wear an ‘A’ for Team Sweden, but he was not named captain today, according to our friends at Eurolanche. Defenseman Staffan Kronwall, who hasn’t played in the NHL since 2008, was named captain, and some question whether Landeskog’s problems as Colorado’s first-year captain hindered his quest to take the same role with Sweden, Eurolanche.com reports.

Meanwhile, Avs defenseman Jan Hejda is earmarked as a top blue-liner for the Czech Republic as the World Championship is set to begin in Finland and Sweden this week.

The Avs are represented on the United States squad by forwards Paul Stastny and Aaron Palushaj and defensemen Erik Johnson and Matt Hunwick. And centers Matt Duchene and Ryan O’Reilly are playing for Canada.

Avs goalie Semyon Varlamov is playing for Russia. He made an interesting comment about Russia’s goalie situation and the Avs’ problems this season that can be seen here. Eurolanche is a good Avalanche source for news when the guys are overseas.

P.A. Parenteau, Matt Duchene and Ryan O’Reilly each told me today they would be honored to play for Team Canada at the upcoming World Championship from May 3-19 in Stockholm, Sweden, and Helsinki, Finland, and Paul Stastny said he and defensemen Erik Johnson and Matt Hunwick are candidates to represented the United States in the annual tournament that overlaps the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Gabe Landeskog said he would gladly play for Sweden, and Semyon Varlamov is likely to play for Russia.

That’s a possible eight Avalanche players representing their countries — plus coach Joe Sacco officially serving as head coach of the U.S. — after the NHL regular season ends April 27.

Usually, preliminary World Championship rosters include NHL players on teams that do not make the Stanley Cup playoffs or bow out in the first round. With the lockout-extended NHL season, only the players from the 14 teams that do make the playoffs will get a chance to play in the first games overseas.

As Duchene pointed out, this year’s World Championship is viewed as a tryout opportunity for the 2014 Olympic Games in Russia, and Duchene and O’Reilly will be among the long list of qualified Canadian centermen. During practice Peter McNab and I talked about how deep Canada is down the middle, while the U.S.’s strength is on the wing. It goes without saying Duchene or any young Canadian center would have no problem making the team as a winger.

The Avs are starting to ramp up talks with several unsigned players, including, my NHL sources say, with at least a couple of the team’s potential unrestricted free agents.
Those potential UFAs are: David Jones, Jay McClement, Cody McLeod, Shane O’Brien and Matt Hunwick.
I can not say with 100-percent certainly who is NOT being negotiated with at all. So, I’m not going to say either way right now who I think they are, but I do know the Avs are talking with them and other unsigned possible RFAs already, which is a good sign for them. The Avs can sometimes wait to the last minute to do these kinds of things, which not always desirable results (Matt Hendricks, Ian Laperriere, etc.). They often do not talk to anybody who goes the UFA route.

Interestingly, one player the Avs have yet to start talking turkey on a new contract yet with is Ryan O’Reilly. My sources say there has yet to be contact between them and his agent, Mark Guy. But I wouldn’t worry about it. He’ll be signed at some point. He’s not going anywhere.

Of the UFAs, I think the Avs are definitely interested in bringing McClement back, along with O’Brien. Jones? Unclear still what’s going on there. I think the Avs want to talk and see what it would take, but I make no hard and fast predictions on him coming back right now.

Hunwick is nearing his 27th birthday and likely the end of his 84-game stint with the Avalanche, after being acquired from Boston for prospect Colby Cohen early in the 2010-11 season. Hunwick is one of Colorado’s two pending unrestricted free agents on the blue line (Shane O’Brien is the other), and given the development of puck-skating D-men Stefan Elliott, 21, and Tyson Barrie, 20, the Avs and Hunwick seem likely to part ways. However, if the Avs again want the definition of consummate pro as their seventh or eighth D, and Hunwick doesn’t have any better offers, maybe he’ll return. We’ll see. It will depend on what the club does with O’Brien and free agency in general, and how it views the development of 2011 first-round draft pick Duncan Siemens.

“Hunny” worked on a one-way, $1.5 million salary last season and played just 10 games through Jan. 1, but got the nod over Elliott, Ryan Wilson and others in the second half. We never saw him complain, sulk, side-step difficult questions when he wasn’t playing, and coach Joe Sacco spoke very highly of him for being such a good pro on a team that often carried eight D, one more than most teams. Here’s hoping Hunwick continues his NHL career next season.

SAN JOSE – Bad trade-deadline day all around. Just not my day at all.
I just never quite had a firm handle on what would happen with John Liles, one of the few times, I’d like to humbly think anyway, where I just didn’t quite trust my instincts enough and report what I really thought. I didn’t think he’d be traded really, but I think I fell into a false trap of listening to others I didn’t quite trust enough, and so last night wrote that my “strong hunch” was that he’d be traded.
Judges: eaaaaaahhhhhh.

He wasn’t traded. As I wrote today in an online version of a story: do I think there were talks between the Avs and other teams over him? Oh yeah. But deadline day is now becoming the day when teams just try to offload the spare furniture, with any big showroom purchases having already taken place.

As I also wrote last night, I hoped I’d be wrong with any hunch that Liles would be traded. And I’m still glad. He’s a tremendous guy, just a class guy all around, and I’ve really come to respect him a lot. He went through athletic purgatory last year, being a healthy scratch despite a big, fat contract, and was widely considered an untradeable albatross. Yet through it all, he stood up and faced the media and just worked his way out of it. Now, I believe he’s become a real leader. And here’s my bet for next season:

Liles will be the captain of the Avalanche. This is assuming Adam Foote retires, which would be sad, but appears almost certain. I truly believe Liles will be the next captain of the Avs if that happens, though Paul Stastny may get it. Liles would deserve it I think. He’s been with the team for seven years now, and he is the only player this year to have played in every game.

He plays hard, he plays hurt, he plays to win every night. He’s a very worthy person to be bestowed the prestigious honor team captain, and I hereby nominate him to get it. Does anybody second my nomination?

– – – – – – –

What deal didn’t happen today, that I was expecting? Some of my informed hockey friends say Matt Hunwick was nearly dealt back to Boston today, but that something nixed the deal and it just never happened.

– – – – – – – – – – –
As I said, long day. I woke up at 4:30 in an Anaheim hotel room, couldn’t fall back asleep so I listened to about 90 minutes of a podcast by Jason Whitlock with Jay Mariotti, which I personally found fascinating as a person in the sports media biz.

But the rest of the day was filled with
– Me spilling green tea latte all over my luggage.
– Not being allowed out of the rental car exit lot when it was shown to me by a nice, older lady that my temporary driver’s license papers were expired, which were standing in for my real, expired driver’s license and, thus, disallowed me from being able to drive out onto the streets of San Francisco.
I hereby apologize to that woman from the National car rental lot for some impatient behavior, which included backing the car out in a huff to re-park it and attempt to get another car at a different company (thanks Hertz).
– The GPS battery going dead in the new car, because it wouldn’t work in the cigarette lighter plug-in thingy.
– Making several wrong turns on the way to San Jose.
– Realizing the hotel I originally booked was way too far from San Jose, so pulling over to the Palo Alto airport and going into some bistro attached, then bringing the laptop into the joint to re-book a hotel and get a bite to eat while trying to shield the green-stained luggage from the goolge-ish types surrounding the place.
Just as the hotel was about to be re-booked, the laptop battery went dead, rendering the reservation non grata.
– Checking into the new hotel, only to find out it’s a hotel in Silicon Valley with no wireless Internet in the room.

And so on. It’s always the day when I think it’s going to go really well that it doesn’t. I never get up that early and do stuff, but there I was at 5 a.m. pacific this morning up and doing stuff and thinking I’d be rewarded for it before my head hit the pillow in the next city.

But it wasn’t all bad. I swear to the lord above, I watched a full half hour of public access TV tonight here in Cupertino where the show was one really old lady talking to another really old lady about the book she wrote about the history of postcards originating from the San Jose area, dating all the way back to the 1700s. Honestly, I loved it. You had to be there.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Some links:
– A pretty funny analysis of the day, I thought, from Greg Wyshynski at Puck Daddy. Greg and I don’t always agree (not at ALL sometimes), but it’s because we’re both a bit cocky and stubborn, and he’s a good writer.

– What did CBC analyst Kevin Weekes think of the Avs’ blockbuster with St. Louis? It wasn’t on the Peter Stastny scale of dislike, but he didn’t like it.

– I work for SI.com too, so I’m biased, but if you don’t laugh at some of the great Michael Farber’s lines – along with also tremendously knowledgeable hockey writer Stu Hackel – in this SI live blog today, well, then I can’t help you.

Kyle Cumiskey is one of the fastest — if not the fastest — skater I’ve ever seen. And when he’s playing with confidence, you think to yourself “This kid could be a Hall of Famer.”

Trouble is, we haven’t seen the confident Cumiskey all that much. It seems like he goes into a tentative shell with the puck when things are going sour, which limits the effective things he can do out there with his speed. When he tries to be a stay-at-home type, just trying to chip the puck out of the zone or make quick passes up the middle, that’s when the trouble starts.

So it’ll be interesting to see what kind of player Cumiskey is when he returns to the lineup, which could come tomorrow against Vancouver. He has been cleared to play again, and it’ll be interesting to see if Joe Sacco puts him in the lineup and sits another D-man to go with a six-man rotation, or whether he goes with seven. Again, it’s not clear whether Cumiskey plays tomorrow or not yet.

Joe Sacco continues to make Jonas Holos the most unfairly treated player in the NHL — the Sacco and Vanzetti of the league, if you will — and Holos again will do his skating in Cleveland for the Lake Erie Monsters. Every fan attending the next Monsters game gets a “Free Holos” bumper sticker.

Cumiskey’s return gives the Avs three D-men who essentially look the same and play the same style. John Liles has certainly produced a lot more on the ice than Cumiskey or Matt Hunwick have this season, so not saying they all play the same way necessarily. Just that they are built the same and play a style that essentially is the same.

DENVER,CO--Colorado Avalanche defenseman, Matt Hunwick, goes after the puck against Travis Hamonic, New York Islanders in the first period at Pepsi Center Saturday afternoon, January 8th 2011. Andy Cross, The Denver Post

First off, a confession: I did not see today’s Avs game against the Islanders. Not one second of it. I will see a lot of it eventually, as I usually DVR games I miss.

But I don’t need to have seen the game to know a lot of you are not happy right now. Not at all.

You’re especially not happy at Matt Hunwick right now. Nor with the coach, Joe Sacco, for playing him right now. Not at all.

Here is just a sampling of Twitter messages to me following today’s 4-3 OT loss to the New York Islanders on a John Tavares goal that apparently Hunwick actually put in his own net:

“Ask Sacco why Hunwick does not get benched, or scratched, and refuses to play Holos. My whole section today chanted Hunwick (stinks).”

“Bumwick is a joke. Absolute sham that he not only plays ahead of Holos, but that he gets increased ice time to boot. B’s fleeced us.”

“TITANTIC full steam ahead! Hunwick is BRUTAL! Can’t hold puck in ever, doesn’t know what to do, this team is imploding!”

Those were the kind ones.
First off, about Holos not playing: you’re preaching to the choir. I’ve been writing for the last few weeks that he should be playing, that he deserves to be playing based on how he played before first Ryan Wilson returned, then the Avs got Hunwick from Boston.

I and other media members have asked Sacco why he prefers to scratch Holos. He’s said, in essence, he thought he was looking tired or just not playing all that well. I thought he was playing very well myself. But what do I know? And what do you know?

Hunwick, Sacco said just the other day, has been playing better of late, and doing a lot of good things. I think a few of you beg to differ.

Oh yeah, one other thing: the only game Holos has played in of late, the other night against Buffalo, was the only game the Avs have won in the past 10 days.

I came into this game thinking I was in for an easy night. I thought the Avs would win this thing handily tonight against Ottawa, and of course I was dead wrong. Not about the Avs winning, at least.

But even without Paul Stastny, I thought the Avs would make short work of what I consider to be a dog team, the Senators. However…

The Avs did everything they could to give Ottawa a great road win to finish up their Western swing. They turned pucks over with regularity, came out flat as a tortilla and watched Craig Anderson give up five goals for the second time in three nights.

And yet, they got away with it. A team missing its top center and two top right wingers scored six more goals. They lead the league in goals, despite a raft of injuries to their TOP GUYS. Is it OK to call these guys the Amazin’ Avs now? I think it’s getting close.

The Avs won this game because they just didn’t quit, and got some great games from their third and fourth lines. Phillipe Dupuis made got two huge assists, the best being a strip of the puck from loafish Sens D-man Filip Kuba and feed in front that Kevin Porter – another guy who played a solid game – put in the net to make it 4-3.

The best goal of the night, though, had to be Ryan O’Reilly’s far-post shot to tie it 5-5 late. It was a classic give-and-go O’Reilly engineered with Daniel Winnik, and then the same type of goal happened on Matt Duchene’s OT winner.

The Avs are not only a fast team, but give-and-go plays like that make the team so much faster and tougher to defend. They don’t have guys who try to go through four players with the puck with their speed and skill (hello Alex Ovechkin). They make short, quick passes to each other, and keep skating after that.

Teams can NOT keep up with these guys. The Avs’ team speed is totally wreaking havoc on the opposition. The opposing defenses have to hang back a lot, and when the forwards turn the puck over to an Av, they are caught flat-footed as the Avs come racing in on the D, often in an odd-man rush.

That’s partly how the final two goals were scored.

Obviously, this was not a perfect win. Craig Anderson was NOT sharp, but his D made some mistakes too. I’ve really liked Matt Hunwick’s speed and seeming good head for the game, but then he’ll make a horrible turnover at times, like the one on Ottawa’s second goal.

Joe Sacco said Hunwick gets in trouble when he tries to “do too much” out there. I guess I’d have to agree. But I still love his speed and overall willingness to go into the corners and be hard on the puck. Ryan Wilson made a couple of bad plays tonight, and so did Kevin Shattenkirk. But Shatty continues to make up for it at the offensive end, with two more assists tonight. That’s 19 points in 21 games. Incredible – for a guy who was cut in training camp and had zero points in 10 games for Lake Erie before an emergency call-up.

It’s possible, folks, we are looking at a very special team. Yes, it’s still under development. The plaster hasn’t hardened enough yet, to really know what this is underneath. But it’s starting to look to me like we have a team here that:
– has a bunch of young guys starting to believe a little in themselves.
– has a coach that is in perfect sync with the players, who knows their strengths and foibles and how to manipulate just well enough to get the most out of the former to overcome just enough of the latter.
– Has a player, Duchene, who is looking more Sakic-ian (I just made that word up) with every passing week. Why do I say that? Because he’s ratcheted up his play when his team really needed it most. When Chris Stewart went down, everybody panicked a little, and the first couple games without him didn’t go well. But starting with that famous bag skate in Duluth, Ga., the Avs have yet to lose and Dutchy has been the main force out there making it happen.

Duchene’s Twitter account, the bang-bang dance and, tonight, the Lambeau Leap after the OT winner – refreshing and fun, isn’t it? Can you dig this, Avalanche “marketing department?” See what happens when a player wants to have some fun out there, wants to interject with the fans and make them feel closer to the team? Fans flock to that stuff. Well, imagine that!

Seems that kind of stuff sells better than stone-faced players reading a script saying “It’s….all….about….the…A….” like those lame-o TV marketing ads the smart Kroenke Sports guys in their suits thought up before the season.

Hey, how’d that marketing campaign work for ya, Kroenke? We saw padded 12K announced crowds in the first quarter of the season. Basically, fans HATED your marketing approach. So, Duchene basically took control of the marketing department himself – and let’s give credit for this, too, to Duchene’s agency in Beverly Hills, led by Pat Brisson.

They are the ones who advised Duchene to get his Twitter account going, to start a better outreach to fans. Then came the bang-bang dance (I’ll have a big story on that out in Tuesday’s paper), and whaddaya know – fans love it! They’re eating it up. Attendance is already picking up – over 15K announced tonight – and Duchene is getting a roar above all others in the pregame player announcements. This is what they call “Building star power”, and stars sell tickets.

Matt Duchene gets it. The team he plays for didn’t get it, but they can’t argue anymore with the results he’s already created. If this team tries to shut down his Twitter account or want to knock off the bang-bang dance because it’s a little too “individual”, then fine, they can go back to nobody knowing any of the players in this town, and 12,000 crowds.

I don’t think the team wants to go back to that, though. I think, begrudging as they may be, the stick-in-the-mud Avs brass can’t fight the future any longer. They have some players whose stars just can’t be dimmed under a milquetoast sales approach.

Thing is, guys like Duchene are TOTAL team guys. They want the COLORADO AVALANCHE to succeed above all else. Thing is, they just want to have some fun going about it. They want to acknowledge, too, that YOU – YOU in the stands, paying the freight, staying loyal to this team – matter to them. They want to involve you in this process.

RALEIGH, N.C. -Getting late, early flight, no more creativity left. So why am I blogging and not sleeping? I don’t really know.
When in Raleigh, do as the Raleighans do, and grab a seat at the above restaurant – Ole Time BBQ. You will thank me for this. Old-school BBQ, served by longtime locals, with all the trimmings. I discovered a delicious concoction today, at lunch, called hush puppies. Oh my god. Basically, it’s just fried dough, with a slightly sweet taste. I could have eaten about five baskets of them, but I stopped at one.

Then, in the media room before the game, there was more UN believable pulled pork. All you could eat for eight bucks. I’d weigh 500 pounds if I covered the Hurricanes.

About tonight’s game: a good enough result for the Burgundy and Blue. I think the result was probably what it should have been. Carolina was just a little bit better in the key areas, with Cam Ward having a very excellent night in net.

The Avs put 35 shots on him, had some good chances, but didn’t quite have that extra ounce of “desperation” to their game, which partially accounts for only one goal going in. Still, that goal got them a point in the standings, and that’s still a good thing for a banged up team on the road.

I thought Craig Anderson was good – and maybe a bit fortunate. At least one post was hit, the Canes just missed on a couple of bunnies, etc. But he was solid. Is he going to play tomorrow night in Tampa?

We won’t know til morning. Joe Sacco said he was going to think about it on the plane ride over and then decide. My hunch? Andy will play again. But I’m not at all overly confident of that prediction. I think Andy still needs a bit of maintenance for his recent injuries, and that could be enough to convince Sacco to let him rest until Tuesday.

How did the new guy, Tomas Fleischmann, look? He was OK. Nothing spectacular – one shot on net in 16:27, but an even plus-minus and pretty responsible with the puck.

I thought the Avs played a perfectly respectable game overall tonight, but one guy – Paul Stastny – needs to be better. With Chris Stewart, TJ Galiardi and Peter Mueller out, Stastny needs to bring it every night. Tonight was his second straight pointless night, and the Avs need more than that.

It’s unfortunate that newcomer Matt Hunwick was a minus-2 in a 2-1 game, but he was. I don’t think that really reflected his play, though. He made a lot of nice little plays with the puck and I think he’s going to be a solid player for this team.

Here is some parting video from the coach on tonight. Good night, time to dream of that pulled pork at Ole Time.

Scott Hannan just traded to the Washington Capitals, for forward Tomas Fleischmann.
Details to come, but I think this is a good pickup for the Avs.

*OK, back at the keyboard.
I think this is a good trade by the Avs, for a couple of reasons:
One, Fleischmann is a speedy, pretty skillful guy. Yes, he was having something of a bad season in Washington, with only four goals and 10 points in 23 games. But a change in scenery can often do wonders for guys with skill who, for one reason or another, were getting stale where they were. Knocks on Fleischmann are that he’s a bit soft and not a great defensive player. He only had 36 hits in 69 games last season, for instance.

But as long as the kid is willing to skate and push the puck and at least try defensively, the Avs will be happy to have Fleischmann and roll the dice on the skills that saw him score 23 goals and 51 points last year.

Also, the Caps tried to convert Fleischmann into more of a centerman this year, but it didn’t work out. He wasn’t good on faceoffs (42 percent) and his natural position is left wing. Going back to that spot could do wonders for his game and confidence again.

Terry Frei graduated from Wheat Ridge High School in the Denver area and has degrees in history and journalism from the University of Colorado-Boulder. He worked for the Rocky Mountain News while attending CU and joined the Post staff after graduation. He has also worked at the Oregonian in Portland, Ore., and The Sporting News. His seventh book, March 1939: Before the Madness, was issued in February 2014.

Chambers covers college and professional hockey for The Denver Post. He has written for the Post since 1994, after dumping his first 9-to-5 office job a couple years out of college. He primarily follows the University of Denver hockey team and helps cover the Avalanche.